BUILDING QUALITY CULTURE [TQM] THROUGH MARKET - ORIENTED STRATEGIC PLANNING
BUILDING QUALITY CULTURE [TQM] THROUGH MARKET - ORIENTED STRATEGIC PLANNING
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Date
1998-10
Authors
ISHOLA, TIMOTHY OLADELE
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Abstract
Modern managers, perhaps more than any other generation of managers, face
the challenge of developing and maintaining high quality in the goods or services they
offer the market place. High quality products are defined as goods or services that
customers rate as being excellent. Most management theorists and practising managers
agree that if an organisation is to be successful in the national and international
business world of today, it must offer high-quality goods or services to its customers.
The maintenance of high-quality products has grown from an issue pertinent to
the future success of individual business enterprises to an issue pertinent to the
economic success of Nigeria as a whole. Indeed, in the communique of a recent
national seminar on National Economic Reconstruction -The Total Quality Management
Concept, organised by Times Ventures Limited in collaboration with the National
Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND), it was stated unambiguously that "the
adoption of Total Quality Management (TQM), nationwide, constitutes a sure recipe for
achieving sustainable economic development and rapid modernisation. It submitted that
"TQM as a philosophy of managerial excellence and industrial commitment to high
standards, holds the key to the resuscitation of Nigeria's ailing parastatals and poorly
run bureaucracies".
In this period of great change and flux in moral values in Nigeria, what
organisations need is a reference point to survive. Change without a constant reference
point is not a comfortable human situation and a realistic product state. Any business
strategy, to be capable of sustained success, must be grounded in competitive
advantage. A company gains competitive advantage when its position gives an edge
in coping with competitive forces and in attracting buyers. Many different positioning
advantages exist: making the highest-quality product on the market, providing customer
service superior to rivals, being recognised as a low-price seller, having a product that
does the best job performing a particular function, being in the best gepgraphical
location, making a more reliable and longer-lasting product, and offering the most value
for the money (a combination of good quality, good service, and acceptable price).
Whichever positioning strategy a company pursues, in order to achieve competitive
advantage, a viable number of customers must end up buying the firm's product
because of the "Superior Value" they perceived it has.
The modern concept of 'quality is a philosophy which aims continually to satisfy
customer requirements. The term 'requirements' covers all aspects of customer
relationships - not the product alone. Acceptance of this philosophy is long overdue in
Nigeria. An obvious truth is that if a customer perceives a product or seh/ice as being
quality, it becomes more attractive. Traditional views on quality were generally restricted
to the product being manufactured to a specification which was monitoijed by 'quality
control'. Modern approaches to quality absorb the whole organisatiop in a quality
culture which aims to provide the customer with a product or service of highest quality
consistent with price.
In a globally competitive world, successful companies are increasingly market
driven which means that everyone in the organisation needs to understand how to
determine customer needs and how to fill them both in terms of the products it makes
and the service it provides.
Market orientation is a technique that concentrates on customers wants and is
often called the marketing concept. The total organisation is geared up} to marketing
and the customer forms the basis for corporate strategic planning. Putting the customer
first has always been the prime consideration for marketing department. Extending this
philosophy to corporate level where everyone is committed to this apprc-ach demands
a major change in attitudes for many. The lead must come from the lop and every
individual have a strong role to play in planning based upon marketing Strategies and
forecasting. Indeed, a recent research evidence gathered in response td the question;
"what makes a company excellent?", revealed that the Company's (total) Employees are
committed to creating satisfied customers. And a corollary of this fact is that, excellent
companies know how to adapt and responded to a continuously changing market place.
In other words, they practice the art of "market-oriented strategic planning".
In today's complex world of business, market-oriented strategib planning is
indispensable to effective management. A number of forces at the present time
reinforces this fact; companies are growing larger and becoming mor^ complex to
manager; competition is becoming more intense; the threats as well as the opportunities
in the evolving environment seemingly are getting more difficult to foresee; product
research and development lead-times and costs are growing while product life cycles
are shortening et-cetra, et-cetra. Business enterprises must therefore be skilled in
identifying major problems that will appear in the future and in taking prc-mpt action to
deal with them. Business organisations must engage in better corporate strategic
planning. Given the turbulent and massively changing (or what Philip Koiler called the
succession of shock wave in the: business environment, a new management planning
process that would keep firms healthy inspite of upsets occurring in any of their
businesses or product-line is called for.
It is a fact that managers in most organisations spend significant arrlounts of time
and effort on strategic planning. However, it is believed that if designed properly,
strategic planning can play an important role in establishing and maintaining product
quality. This thesis has therefore examined the principal managerial tasks associated
with building quality (culture) and offered perspectives on how market-driven (oriented)
forms should act to achieve this through instructive methods of crafting a well-conceived
strategy and then successfully executing it. And as you set out to discover the hidden
treasure in this thesis, let me just say a little bon appetit.
Description
A PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL,
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA, IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
(M.B.A) DEGREE
DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION,
INSTITUTE OF ADMINISTRATION
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY,
ZARIA.
Keywords
BUILDING,, QUALITY,, CULTURE,, MARKET,, ORIENTED,, STRATEGIC,, PLANNING